


mirror, mirror

by mutterandmumble



Category: Dreamer Trilogy - Maggie Stiefvater, Raven Cycle - Maggie Stiefvater
Genre: Additional Warnings In Author's Note, Angst, Character Study, Complicated Relationships, Explicit Language, Extended Metaphors, Gen, Mentions of Suicide, Pre-Canon, Self-Destruction, Spoilers
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2021-03-14
Updated: 2021-03-14
Packaged: 2021-03-21 22:41:18
Rating: Teen And Up Audiences
Warnings: No Archive Warnings Apply
Chapters: 1
Words: 4,425
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/30028947
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/mutterandmumble/pseuds/mutterandmumble
Summary: And then there’s Hennessy, looking just as she always has, looking just like Jordan- barefoot, breathing, bones with a body to match. There’s Hennessy, eyes glassy with lack of sleep and face taut with the dull shine of cheap vodka, glowing from the inside-out, and there’s Hennessy with a stumbling tear in the sleeve of her jacket, sitting on the counter with one hand curled over the edge of the sink as she swings her legs with a motion so slow so as to hardly exist at all.Or: in which some things are easier to mend than others
Relationships: Hennessy & Jordan (Raven Cycle), No Romantic Relationship(s)
Kudos: 1





	mirror, mirror

**Author's Note:**

> cw for canon-typical mentions of suicide of a family member, as per Hennessy’s backstory, as well as explicit descriptions of someone being drunk and references to self-destructive behavior. 
> 
> So this is far from perfect because school has been kicking my ass and I’ve been having a number of other health issues so I haven’t really had much time for writing. That said, I absolutely had to write _something_ at least for Jordan and Hennessy before mister impossible comes out, because there is not NEARLY enough content for them and their dynamic is ridiculously compelling. Crossing my fingers for some more Hennessy content in mi because I Love Her and she deserves it.

On the third floor of the house they’ve made their not-quite home, past the towering doors of oak or cherry or some other suitably dramatic wood- the sort that can be shined within an inch of its life- and then three ways past the ostentatious mass of paint and canvas that might pass for a portrait if you tilted your head and dropped your standards, there’s a bathroom. It’s as grossly indulgent as the rest of this house that they’ve hollowed out, made up of a mirror that stretches the whole length of one of the walls and black and white tile laid prone beneath a double sink and then a clawfoot tub curling primly up and over itself right smack in the middle of it all, positioned in such a way that no matter how hard you might try you’re bound to stumble over it at least once. The ceiling is high and arching and the lightning dim and sultry, the sort of red-gold flare made to flatter and little else; the air always smells faintly of some thick, cloying perfume, there’s a black smudge of mold blooming beneath the sink, and Jordan hates it all like she’s never let herself hate anything else.

So naturally she finds herself there often. Before she goes out, when she’s arranging her hair just so and applying eyeliner with a surgical precision, at night when she brushes her teeth and can nearly bear to look herself in the eye, in the early, early hours of the morning when she stumbles in, thoroughly overwhelmed and ever-awake and then simply stands there, still as can be as she takes in the sprawl of her features and the quiet ironies of her pajama shorts (patterned with rubber ducks, completely out of place, well-loved regardless). She takes her body apart and puts it back together beneath her artist’s eye, critical and careful because she is, for lack of a better phrase,  _ detail-oriented- _ they all are, in this house, because as you might imagine being  _ detail-oriented  _ is something of a necessity if you are to do what they do. 

Which is to say: it is something of a necessity if they are to survive in their ever-rising numbers and their forced stagnancy. It is something of a necessity if they are to endure through their toil and their terror. It is something of a necessity if they would like to continue to exist with as much force as they’re able for longer than they’d be otherwise allowed. 

Which is to say: You can’t exactly forge art if you don’t spare a thought or two for the details. 

But regardless. The bathroom in all its needless opulence lies at the end of the hall, and it’s one of those places that’s soaked through with implication right down to the bone. It belongs to Jordan, and it belongs to Hennessey, and the rest of their ever-changing group turn a blind eye to it in the manner of an open secret. The two of them act accordingly: by unspoken agreement they find themselves there when they’ve got nowhere else to go, when the whole rest of the world’s gone sharper than even they can bear and the crush of noise becomes too much and blends down into a smear of blue-green unrelentingly pressed up against their makeshift sanctuary, prodding at the boundaries with a relentless determination. Making itself known, whether they like it or not. 

And as it is, no one has seen Hennessy for a week. 

And as it is, Jordan’s torn between worry and frustration, and as it is Jordan’s burnt and burning, and as it is Jordan’s running on fumes. It’s not uncommon for Hennessy to waltz in and out of their lives like this, to drop in dizzied and punch-drunk and made bright by a whirlwind of worry that finally got the best of her and then whatever else she could get her hands on, but in the end of things she always does come back. Over and over, without fail, because for all that she is and all that she’s ever been Hennessy could never quite bear to leave them. 

Which Jordan understands, of course- Jordan could never quite bear to leave Hennessy, either. But her stomach’s gone soft with fear by this point, her limbs pliant and trembling and her heart brushing little frightened flutters against her ribs. And it’s late at night now and she’d heard the door slam with the sort of earth-shattering rumble that she’s only ever heard one person manage, so she’s drawn in a breath and placed her paintbrush down and driven herself up and out of the studio, taking her body and all that it entails with her as she creeps her way along the long, winding hallways. She gives herself over to the inevitable with all the emotional heft of a handshake as she draws ever closer, turns the situation every which way and tries to make as much sense of it as she can. 

If none of them have seen Hennessy for a week, then it’s because Hennessy did not want to be seen. And if a Hennessy who did not want to be seen has finally stumbled back into her house, then it only follows that she’d take herself and all her stale self-loathing down to their open secret, where she could fester and fuss away at herself in peace or at the very least the closest thing to peace that any of them have ever managed to get, which is probably just to the left of what it ought to be. 

Jordan knows Hennessy. Hennessy knows Jordan. The both of them feel as raw as a scrap of a skin on a good day; the difference between  _ good  _ and  _ bad  _ then lies in how good they are at hiding it. So if none of them have seen Hennessy for a week then Hennessy had reached some sort of limit. And if Hennessy can’t bear to leave them, and Hennessy can’t quite bear to do away with them or herself- it’s all the same, in the end - then she’d gone off to dull the edge, and now she’s back. For now, she’s back. 

And so here comes Jordan, armed with nothing but her paint-stained shirt and her pajama shorts and her years and years of experience. Here comes Jordan round the bend, dragging herself three ways past the non-portrait and then folding her hand around a doorknob, drawing in a breath at the little slip of light struggling out from beneath the bathroom door. Here comes Jordan, barefoot and breathing, skin soft and thin beneath her shirt and over her bones, her eyes open wide and heart beating steady as she steps over the threshold. 

And then there’s Hennessy, looking just as she always has, looking just like Jordan- barefoot, breathing, bones with a body to match. There’s Hennessy, eyes glassy with lack of sleep and face taut with the dull shine of cheap vodka, glowing from the inside-out, and there’s Hennessy with a stumbling tear in the sleeve of her jacket, sitting on the counter with one hand curled over the edge of the sink as she swings her legs with a motion so slow so as to hardly exist at all. Her boots have been discarded on the floor in two slumped pools of black leather, complete with heels sharp enough to kill (Jordan would know) and she’s rumpled in much the way that one would expect, listed slightly to the left. She turns, when the door opens; they look right at each other, and she gives the sorry little shrug of someone who’s been caught doing something that they weren’t supposed to do.

“So where’ve you been, then?” Jordan asks without really asking. They’re both very good at empty questions. Her voice echoes off the walls, bigger than it ought to be and unwelcome at that; the air’s too still and her words too sharp, and discomfort wriggles its way up her spine. She pushes it back down, because she’s  _ busy  _ and she doesn’t have the time for discomfort if she’s  _ busy.  _ Hennessy tilts her head in vague acknowledgement anyways, regardless of the odd slant of the moment, and waves her hand in the sort of grand gesture that encompasses the whole wide world. As for Jordan- well, Jordan takes a deep breath in through her nose and prepares herself for a headache. 

“Where  _ haven’t  _ I been?” Hennessy murmurs, voice reverent in the complete, quiet way that can only be achieved by a person who’s drunk off their ass.

“Right,” Jordan says, sharp on the exhale. Then she pushes her way over, steps carefully over the discarded boots until she’s standing right next to Hennessy. Aside from the obvious, she seems to be in decent condition; not as good as she could be, but nowhere near as bad. From the looks of it, her jacket’s borne the brunt of the damage- it’s one of Henessy’s favorites too, Jordan notes with a little twinge of something or other pressing into her stomach, and now it’s stained with something dark and dreary, marred by the tear which is a big jolt of a thing that travels halfway up her forearm, splitting to show a slip of skin beneath. 

“What the hell did you  _ do _ ,” Jordan grumbles, prodding at the raw edge with her finger. Hennessy bats her away, still lucid enough to be indignant, still far enough away from herself to be glassy-eyed and breathless, eyes caught on the lightbulb right above her head in childlike wonder. Jordan feels a little fond and a little frightened. She ignores this in all its measures and iterations, and then she pokes at the tear again. 

“Fuckin- fuckin’  _ stop _ ,” Hennessy hisses, glaring in a way that would be significantly more intimidating if it were anyone else on earth. “You’re just gonna make it worse. I  _ like  _ this jacket, so you can’t- you can’t make it  _ worse. _ ” 

“It’s already torn,” Jordan tells her, matter-of-fact. “I’m not making it  _ worse,  _ I’m trying to see if I can  _ fix  _ it.” 

Hennessy blinks at her. Her eyes are dark, endless; the same eyes that Jordan sees whenever, in a moment of weakness or a needless show of bravado, she finds herself face-to-face with herself. 

“Oh,” she says, and the word falls flat. “Well you should’ve said that then.”

And Jordan looks at her, still seated on the counter, hardly able to see straight and kicking her legs in slow, uneven rhythms, so  _ real _ in the low red light of the bathroom that the air seems to cling to her skin, and she feels reality hit her back and slide to the floor like meat sloughed from a bone. She feels faded and vulnerable in the midst of the night, somewhere between  _ here  _ and  _ there.  _

This is rather normal for her. None of them quite know what Hennessy’s dreams are made of- an idea, several ideas, some latent reserve of magic open to an unfortunate few, sheer fuckall determination- but they’re made of  _ something _ at least, and so when Jordan came into being she was made of  _ something  _ at least, though she found that try as she might she couldn’t make sense of herself in any way that mattered. Was she a human, was she some magical approximation of a human, was she a monster, was she a copy, was she, was she,  _ was she-  _ she was definitely real, she thought, though she’d figured as much with a childish sort of logic. Cause and effect. If she was able to push over a mug and that mug unquestionably existed, then surely she must exist as well. 

These days she’s relatively secure in her own realities; these days, she’s more worried about the slow simmer of resentment that’s growing between them all, something as sweetly insidious as the sun in the sky. Jordan would like to think that by this point in her life she’s gotten good at shunting bad feelings down and back and away, out of necessity, but- well. She’s as steady as the shore to Hennessy’s sea; she came from her like thunder rolls its way from lightning, sprung from her head fully realized as if the bright rap of a chisel to a skull drew her out of hiding and then flung her clear of her lovely little non-life, had her strike the earth a stone and spring back up a person. She was born something of an opportunist- she came from a rib, a hip, the thick coat of fear used to line a throat, and then she grew a body and a brain and she became something  _ more _ . 

She grew herself from the ground up, spent the years learning how to paint and how to live and then found that she was really much better at one than the other. And now she’s been alive for years and years, and somewhere along the way her and Hennessy had developed offshoots and dead-ends and faces folded onto faces. They’ve made it farther than Jordan ever thought that they’d be able to, but now they’re living their lives by the way of the high-speed chase, the red-tinted romance, and she’s still growing alright but as it is she’s growing  _ tired.  _ She still gets that little trill in her stomach, the vindictive roar of a job well done, but that’s as much Hennessy as it is herself as it is June or Madox or Trinity, fuck it, fuck it,  _ fuck it.  _ Fuck it.

Because for all this growing that they’ve done they’ve never quite managed to grow into themselves, and now they’re both adults (somehow, somehow), and they’ve both got the dark filigree of flowers wound around their necks and the weight of the world on their shoulders, and they’re both brightly, painfully alive. And they’re in the bathroom, and it’s late at night and nothing feels real and Hennessy’s jacket is torn, and for all that Jordan’s growing and for all that she’s grown, she’s able to fix exactly one of these things. 

“Stay still,” she sighs, slipping herself back into reality with the ease of a well-worn role. “I mean it. Don’t fucking move. I’m gonna grab the sewing kit and we’re gonna see if we can’t fix that, okay? So  _ don’t fucking move _ .” 

Hennessy salutes. “Aye aye, captain!” she cheers, and then bursts into laughter, the sort where she's folded over and holding her stomach, the sort where her shoulders shake and her eyes are shut and she looks for a moment like she’s never felt anything else on earth, like she’s never existed outside the here and now. 

And that’s well and good and all, but Jordan’s got a job to do. So she sighs again and reaches an arm around Hennessy’s head, presses at the medicine cabinet until it gives out and opens up, and then she plucks the sewing kit from where it’s sitting propped up against a corner. It’s a mundane little thing, purple plastic wound around slim shoots of silver and a single, half-wound bobbin, two clear-as-day buttons and then a smattering of pins topped off with little gray-gold beads. There’s a pair of scissors smaller than her pinkie, too, the sort that fold into themselves with a little bit of coaxing and then one great implosion brought about before they’ve got time to fight back. 

Mundane. Normal. As out of place in their lives as a burst of light. But it does what it does and it does what it has to, so it’s good enough for now. 

Jordan draws her arm back with both her unruly emotions and the sewing kit in hand, and then she positions herself in front of Henessy, who is staring at the lightbulb above the mirror like it’ll tell her the secrets of the universe if she asks very nicely. Well, Jordan thinks as she smacks the sewing kit down on the counter with a slightly unnecessary vehemence and watches as Hennessy startles from her reverie with a yelp, it isn’t fucking special- in their lives, anything could tell them the secrets of the universe if they pushed it hard enough, and it really starts to get rather boring after a while. For once, Jordan would like to speak with something that  _ isn’t  _ a foregone conclusion. 

Regardless. The jacket. 

“Let me see that,” Jordan says, brisk and sharp as she snaps the sewing kit open. Hennessy shrugs the jacket off and hands it over with a giggle, running her thumb over the tear and then quick as a whip slipping a glossy nail into it and jerking to the left. The material is thick enough that it doesn’t give easy, but there’s the definite tear of fabric, a definite change in shape. Jordan scowls at her as she jerks it away, folding it over her arm as she deftly pulls the thread free and sets about trying to see how well it matches the jacket. 

“The fuck was that for?” she says crossly. Hennessy is still laughing in little aftershocks, unborn bursts of glee that swing in and out of focus. “What was all that fuss about not making it worse if you were just going to _make it worse?_ ”

“I’m keeping things exciting. Keeping you on your toes,” Hennessy tells her. She reaches over and boops her nose; in a completely unrelated turn of events, Jordan decides that she doesn't particularly care if the thread matches the jacket, so if the shades of black are so different as to be noticeable then Hennessy’s just going to have to deal with it. She takes the scissors next, measures a length and cuts it short, threads the needle with all the fumbling grace of a person trying to mend clothing by the dull, red-gold light of some rich person’s vanity. God, would it have killed them to find somewhere to live that had decent lighting? God, would it have  _ killed  _ them to not have to build themselves into a place like  _ this _ ?

“Look,” she says, short and stern because she’s beginning to get frustrated. “If you mess me up when I’m sewing this then you’re just gonna have to do it yourself. It’s late. I was painting. I don’t have  _ time  _ for this.”

“For me?” Hennessy asks, light as can be.

“For  _ this _ ,” Jordan repeats firmly, unimpressed. Hennessy gives her a smile, somewhere on the border of mean and meaner. Jordan scowls back, because Jordan doesn’t believe in pretense, and Hennessy slumps back into herself, closes her eyes and tilts her head back The light draws out the shadows beneath her eyes, the sharp cut of her cheekbones- anywhere else and she would look drawn, tired in the bone-deep way that one would expect from someone who's been doing god knows what for the past week but as it is the lighting was installed with performance in mind and there’s no rest for the weary, not without a little effort first. 

So knockoff barroom lighting isn’t the best for emotional vulnerability. Next, she’s going to learn that being a dream copy of another person has a negative effect on someone’s self-esteem. 

Regardless. Hennessy has started humming, something soft and sweet and formless, little warbles and wobbles the only thing keeping it from being a single, strong note. 

“It was nice outside,” she says, breaking the tone as Jordan holds the jacket up to the light, assessing the damage as best as she’s able. “Not too hot. Not too cold. Wasn’t fucking humid, which was great ‘cause I  _ hate  _ it when it’s fucking humid. Feels like I’m drowning, fucks with my hair, bad all around. All this fucking magic, and no one’s ever been like hey! Maybe we should make it  _ not fucking humid _ !” 

She slams a hand down on the counter, because god forbid that she let her point be made without some sort of emphasis. Always a show, with the two of them. Never a quiet moment. 

“And there was music playin’ in the cab,” Hennessy continues, “And it was kinda shit. Not loud enough, no beat, no  _ substance-  _ could’ve heard it playing in an elevator, that’s how bad it was. So it wasn’t humid but the music was bad, and I think that that was on purpose. Like the universe was trying to balance it out, yeah? One for one. Eye for an eye but like, without the whole revenge thing I guess because I’m talkin’ about the weather and I’m not gonna talk shit about the weather because the weather can’t really help it and I’m not fucking  _ rude _ .”

“Can’t argue with that,” Jordan says, voice dry. Hennessy pulls a face at her, taps at the counter. 

“You couldn’t see the stars either,” she says next, staring up at the ceiling. She’s gone oddly contemplative; light and airy, hardly there at all. “Light pollution. Fucked up, really. No good music, and you couldn’t see the stars. What’s the point if you couldn’t even see the fucking  _ stars _ ?”

These last words are listless, mumbling, and when Jordan looks at her, she seems very young in the light; young, not tired, but somewhere close Jordan feels a rush of very complicated emotions. Then she slides down to the floor and presses the jacket into her lap, runs her fingers over the tear once more and thinks: this, if nothing else, she can fix this if nothing else. 

Her first stitch is a little heavy-handed. She snorts and undoes it. Then she works for a moment more, stark in the silence. When she chances a glance back up at Hennessy, she’s gone back to staring at the lightbulb in that same glaze-eyed wonder from before. 

Jordan knows what she’s thinking, she thinks, because they’ve known each other forever. Hennessy had spit her out when she was eleven years old, struck still by her mother’s death and moving like a person who’d forgotten how they were meant to move- all dial-up with no follow through, a slide and a shuffle and a promise unfulfilled- through days that fell flat and nights rife with a choked-up terror that wormed its way into her bones and then wouldn’t let go, not for anything on earth or beyond it or lingering somewhere in the in between. It had been three straight days of nothing since that day with their mother, with  _ her  _ mother and the gun, and Henessey had been learning how to take that anger and that fear and that memory that was tangled into memory that was tied up and hitched to the whole rest of her and put it somewhere that she’d never have to look at it again.

That somewhere was a dream, as as it is and as it was a dream had no business making itself real. But from that dream, from the bowels of the cherry red wood marred by chipped varnish and the three deep gouges left by someone with a sharp object and the willingness to use it, from the limitless spaces hung between the hop-skip-jumps of the record player, from the hasty spill of light that rushed like a river through that crack in the door and filled the closet like the sea, and from that dream that turned itself on its head and became a slow, pulsing mass of nothing, a tangle of desire that held had held her close, patient as a mother and older than the earth- from that dream came Jordan. 

So maybe they haven’t known each other  _ forever,  _ but they’ve known each other in all the time since. All the time that matters. Long enough that she knows she can relax because Hennessy’s started humming again, anyways; it’s nothing but a tuneless mumble of notes this time, no words and no structure, but there’s a steadiness to it that seems to settle something within Jordan, that brings her back down to earth. She’s in the red-gold light, she’s sitting on the black-white-black-white floor, the jacket is heavy over her hands. The claw foot tub is shrinking away from them both, turned up on itself; Hennessy is tapping her nails against the countertop in a quiet rhythm, back behind the humming. 

The needle goes through the lining and comes out the leather, over and over, and the flowers on her neck throb in time and her heart goes tapping away at her chest with each stitch, each proof of life. If the jacket unquestionably exists and she is sewing up the jacket, then surely she must exist as well. If Hennessy unquestionably exists, and she has had some sort of impact on Hennessy, if she was able to walk in here and take the jacket and work her way through Hennessy’s fugue, her haze of stars or not-stars and red-gold lighting, then surely she must exist as well. 

It’s a very nice thought. It’s just enough to take the lack of feeling, the numbness of the liminal and turn it into something heavy enough to fall on the right side of hurting. It’s just enough to get her through the last few stitches, to cut the thread off and secure it. The sleeve is turned right side out, the fabric smooth and soft. It’s a job well done; it’s good enough for now. 

“Here,” she says, flicking Hennessy’s leg to get her attention. The humming stops abruptly and she swings to look at her, lost enough for a moment that Jordan can practically see the slow shutter of her brain. A moment more and she’s burst back into motion though, reaches down slowly to gather the jacket up and look the sleeve over. 

“‘s nice,” she mumbles, as sincere as she can get, and then she blinks. Then she blinks again. And again and again and again. “Thanks.” 

Then she slides it on and hops off the counter, strides barefoot to the door and crosses the threshold with nothing even approaching hesitation. She leaves her boots behind. Jordan stares at the swing of the door on its hinges for a moment, only half there, before drawing in a deep breath and hooking her fingers around the edge of the counter, pulling herself upright. She’s standing alone now and staring herself down in the mirror, looking at her young-looking eyes and young-looking face and the pajama shorts with their rubber ducks, and she swears that barely, just  _ barely  _ she hears Hennessy mutter something about  _ those fucking stars  _ before she’s gone for good. 

  
  


**Author's Note:**

> Please consider leaving a comment if you enjoyed!! I love hearing from you guys!!


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